Hauntings
by Xrai
Summary: Even after death, Ianto's ghost haunts the people who knew him.
1. Archivist's Secret

******Title: **Hauntings (1/4)  
**Rating:** PG**  
****Character(s)/Pairing(s):** Lois Habiba, Ianto Jones; Jack/Ianto (mentioned)**  
****Summary: **Even after death, Ianto's ghost haunts the ones who knew him.**  
****Warnings:** COE compliant**  
****Disclaimer:** Torchwood and associated characters belong to BBC and RTD.

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_**Archivist's Secret**_

It starts with the footsteps. They don't belong to anyone Lois knows, not anyone who belongs in the ruins of the Hub anyway. They're not Gwen's _tocktock_ of hard heels, or Rhys' shuffle of sneaker clad feet. The footsteps tread quietly and steadily, faint but still there, and they always fade away as soon as she's sure they'd be right on top of her.

It starts with the footsteps, but it doesn't end there. There are murmurs, whispers. The Archives are draughty, especially now with the upper levels of the Hub gone, but she can hear words in the wind. She tells herself she is tired, shuts the place down and goes home. The whispers don't follow her there.

They are here again the next day. She can smell coffee, but not the cheap crap she'd grabbed on the way here. There is a minor feeling of disdain hanging in the air and she finds herself tipping her coffee into the bay as she heads to Starbucks to get a marginally better one. She ignores the Archives aura of smugness when she returns.

The sounds, the feelings of being watched, the whispers in her ear and the wind in her hair are all creepy, yet strangely comforting. She doesn't feel alone in the vast labyrinth of shelves, storage boxes and cramped rooms. She's never gotten lost so far. And even if she's never seen a certain artefact before, and has found no files about it to make a cross-reference, she can tell almost immediately what it is and classify it by type, origin, and date of acquisition.

The memories that linger aren't always good ones. On the second day here she thinks she hears someone crying; breathy, muffled sobs of pain and heartbreak. Another time a drawer slams with an angry rattle several rooms down. Muted and incomprehensible angry shouts startle her on another and a scream once made her heart leap to her throat.

Other sounds are less frightening, but they embarrass her instead. The rustle of clothes and the slither of belts on cloth from the shelf behind her. A bitten down moan from next door, harsh panting in the corridor. She blushes, leaves the room and tries not to listen. Even ghosts deserve their privacy.

She likes best the silent murmurs that come in the evening when her eyes ache from peering at faded letters and her hands are grey with dust. She sits with her back against the wall and listens, quietly, to the wordless voice that echoes in the dark, vaulting rooms. No words she can hear but she can feel the love behind them, the tenderness and affection that sometimes brings tears to her eyes.

Gwen doesn't know, and neither does Rhys. Lois doesn't think she will ever tell them. This is her secret, her Torchwood secret. These are Ianto Jones' memories for her, and one day, once Torchwood has taken her life, her own and his will belong to her successor. And so on.

The Archives are more than artefacts and files in musty rooms. They are echoes and whispers and memories and it's part of her job to take care of them too.

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**Next part:** Even Stars Go Out


	2. Even Stars Go Out

******Title: **Hauntings (2/4)  
**Rating:** PG-13**  
****Character(s)/Pairing(s):** Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones; Jack/Ianto (mentioned), Jack/OC**  
****Summary: **Even after death, Ianto's ghost haunts the ones who knew him.**  
****Warnings: **COE compliant  
**Disclaimer:** Torchwood and associated characters belong to BBC and RTD.

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_**Even Stars Go Out**_

As soon as he can he tries to forget. He's on his fourth hypervodka and slumped across the bar when Ianto tells him, very matter-of-factly in his "I know everything" tone, that drinking actually reinforces bad memories in his mind. Jack finds the solution at the business end of his gun and wakes up the next morning in an alley with a killer headache. Which is good. The pain takes his mind of things.

He jumps from galaxy to galaxy and keeps running, but it's never far enough.

Alonso Frame is cute and game enough for the craziest things in and out of bed. But he's also quiet, just a little awkward and loves the coat far too much, so Jack directs him to Torchwood and then leaves him too.

On New China he burns the coat, an offering to the dead.

She reminds him of someone, but he can't go beyond fleeting snatches of memory until she's right in front of him and –_oh_– that's himself he's seeing, in her eyes. Just as broken, just as empty. She will come back with him tonight and he can forget, just for an instance, about his pain.

The cabin is dark when they stumble in and he polarizes the window so the starlight is shut out too. They fuck, blindly. She claws down his back and the marks disappear instantly. No name, no face and even her memory will fade in the morning.

Ianto's ghost sits by the dresser and watches, silently.

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To be continued in:  
**Wake Up and Smell the Coffee**  
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	3. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

******Title: **Hauntings (3/4)  
**Rating:** PG**  
****Character(s):** Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones**  
****Summary:** Even after death, Ianto's ghost haunts the ones who knew him.  
**Warnings: **COE compliant**  
****Disclaimer:** Torchwood and associated characters belong to BBC and RTD.**

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**_Wake Up and Smell the Coffee_**

It's easier to miss Jack at first. Jack is loud and fills the room with his coat and extravagant personality. Jack talks and laughs and jokes and tells tales and when Jack isn't around it is so very, very silent.

And in the silence is Ianto.

It comes to her a week after his death when Rhys makes her coffee in the morning. She finds herself throwing up in the toilet and both of them pretend it is just morning sickness. She turns to tea instead, herbal and fruit ones, nothing with caffeine.

Morning commutes to the new Hub are worse. Every pale, dark-haired Welsh male is Ianto, every suit –and by God, it seems that no one in Cardiff can carry off a suit half as well as Ianto ca- could– makes her start.

And when she visits the ruins of Torchwood Three's former headquarters, Ianto's presence just makes her want scream and scream and never stop, just like poor Jonah in Flat Holm, because she can survive without Jack, _has_ survived without Jack, but Ianto just had to go and _die thegoddamnbastard!_

But if he weren't already dead he'd probably kill himself if he saw the state of the Archives.

It hurts most because she knows Jack runs. Jack is good at running, she's seen him do it before and knows he'll do it again. Which he has. But Ianto, Ianto would have stayed. Or at least stuck around long enough to help reorganise Torchwood and hire a new team. He'd have gotten the Archives into order before running after Jack.

But Ianto is gone, _gonegonegone_ and she can't bring him back, not like Suzie, or Owen, or even Jack and _ohgod_ she is so **_alone_**.

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To Be Concluded in:  
In Memory of Ianto Jones**  
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	4. In Memory of Ianto Jones

******Title:** Hauntings (4/4)  
**Rating:** PG**  
****Character(s): **Rhiannon Davies, Gwen Cooper**  
****Summary: **Even after death, Ianto's ghost haunts the ones who knew him. **  
****Warnings:** COE compliant**  
****Disclaimer:** Torchwood and associated characters belong to BBC and RTD.

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_**In Memory of Ianto Jones**_

She knows she shouldn't, the woman being pregnant and all, but Rhiannon still slaps Gwen Cooper, even if it's simply for the vicious sense of satisfaction.

It's her petty revenge against what's left of Torchwood.

Ianto is dead. Ianto who had loved reading and chocolate and who was once the most annoying brat in the universe. Ianto who had ripped the head off her favourite Barbie and who had tried to flush her copy of 'Watership Down' down the toilet. Ianto who'd broken Mam's heart when he'd been caught shoplifting and left Cardiff as soon as Tad was dead. Ianto who'd left home a scruffy young man and returned a suited stranger. Ianto who'd made great coffee and tea, who'd hardly talked to her, who'd had a dead girlfriend, who'd worked for the government as a secret agent or something, who'd gone bender and who'd gone off to save the world and her children. And died. Her annoying brat, her idiot, her silly bugger, her daft sod, her baby, her brother, her _Ianto_.

Oh god, Ianto is dead.

She hadn't even said goodbye. There'd been no hugs, no kiss on the cheek, just a quick "be careful" and she'd let him rush off to his death.

Some sister she was.

In the end she has to admit to herself that she's just as angry as herself as she is at Torchwood.

But she's already guilty enough about Ianto so she's not going to feel guilty about slapping Gwen Cooper.

The cardboard box is heavy in her hands. This is all that's left of him; the sum of the person he had been has been stored away in this cardboard box. Let Cooper and her bloody Torchwood keep the rest; she wants this. Just this. Maybe it will help her learn more about who Ianto Jones had been.

Ianto, oh Ianto, Yan, Yan, Yan.

-1-1-1-1-1-

The box sits under her bed, unopened. She cannot bear to open it, to confront her memories and her guilt.

At night she dreams of him, his younger and older selves overlapping into one person, begging her to save him. And all she can do is shake her head, tears pouring down her face. And it always ends with the faceless figure of his Jack pulling him away while she screams silently.

Johnny tries to understand, but doesn't make a very good job of it.

She hates it how little things make her tear up about him; a cup of coffee, a silk tie, Mica and David fighting liked she'd used to with Ianto.

Sometimes she finds herself spacing out, her mind wandering back to her childhood when things had been simpler. Hard, but easy at the same time. Ianto would have loved the paradox.

The photos she has of him distract her; she catches a glimpse of him from the corner of her eye and her desperate mind makes her think "he's back, oh god, he's back" until reality tells her that the only brother she has left smiles up at her from glossy paper.

-1-1-1-1-1-

It's raining when she finally pulls out the box and opens it with shaking hands. Ianto loved the rain, so every time it does, she tells herself it is for him. Tears for her baby brother, the tears of guilt she doesn't weep.

The first thing she sees in the box is a suit. It's expensive, black wool with a faint grey pinstripe. It looks like it's been added as an afterthought, but she finds it rather fitting. As his armour, it only makes sense that a suit should hide away and protect his more intimate possessions.

She lifts it reverently and lays it aside. Digs into the box and pulls out a book, a diary.

Rhiannon's lost Ianto, and it's partly her fault, so she owes it to him now to find him again in the remnants of his life.

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**Thank you for reading.  
And thank you very much to all who have (and will) commented.**  
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